Share this:

Firefighters saved three Brooklyn family members from tragedy yesterday – plucking them from a blaze that trapped them inside their home.

“They lost everything. School bags, clothes, furniture – everything they owned,” said Dawn Marie Mena, whose mother, sister and nephew were spared by quick-acting rescuers as the fire raged through the house.

Fire officials said the blaze broke out shortly after midnight in the three-story home in the Greenpoint section.

Mena – who lives around the corner from her parents’ home, and wasn’t there when the blaze erupted – said four people were inside the house.

Her sister, Lisa Santiago, and her sister’s boyfriend, Joseph Rodriguez, were sleeping on the second floor.

Her sister’s son, Alex, 14, and her mom, Veronica Hotz, 42, were on the third floor. Her father wasn’t home.

Mena said Rodriguez got up to go to the bathroom at about 12:30 a.m. When he opened the bathroom door, fire was climbing the wall. “It flashed,” Mena said.

A frantic Rodriguez tried to call 911, but the phone was dead. Instead, he raced outside, found a working firebox and called for help.

Santiago, meanwhile, raced upstairs to rescue her son and her mom, Mena said. But she left the door to the room open, and flames shot up the stairs, trapping them.

“My sister was screaming out the third-floor window,” she said. “She couldn’t get up or down, and the window guard was stuck.”

That’s when firefighters from Engine Companies 238 and 212, along with Ladder Co. 106, arrived on the scene – saving the family from peril.

One firefighter said two of the family members were saved through a window, and the third was carried down the stairs.

“The team did an excellent job,” said the firefighter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “They saved three people from certain death.”

Mena said her mother suffered cardiac arrest at the scene, and was revived there by medical technicians.

Officials at Woodhull Hospital, where her mother and sister were taken for treatment, would not provide details of their conditions, saying only they were in the intensive-care unit.

Fire officials said the blaze was under investigation. Sources at the scene said it may have been sparked by a faulty refrigerator.

While officials sifted through the rubble, Mena pleaded for help. “Anything anybody can do would help,” she said. “They need everything.”